Welcome to the Movie Club! Today’s movie is Joe Dante’s comedic love letter to cinema, Matinee!
Matinee tells the story of a B-movie, Mant, being released in Key West, Florida during the Cuban Missile Crisis. There are a number of different characters and subplots both circling and directly involved with the screening, including Lawrence Woolsey (played by John Goodman), a William Castle-esque figure who directed the movie, Gene Loomis, a good natured teenage horror fan who lives on a military base, and Harvey Starkweather, a greaser/poet who ends up working for Woolsey.
Matinee was released on January 23, 1993, It reached only #6 in the box office, and was ultimately a bomb, earning only $9.5 million on a $14 million budget.1 Despite this, it achieved critical acclaim, earning a 93% on Rotten Tomatoes.2
Trivia:3
- A few of the character names are references to the actors of 1950s sci-fi film, such as the characters of Herb Denning and Ruth Corday, whose names reference actors Richard Denning and Mara Corday.
- Naomie Watts appears in her North American film debut as the lead actress in The Shook-Up Shopping Cart.
- The original script was written by Jerico Stone and was quite different. It was more of a fantasy film where a bunch of kids go to see Mant! at what sounds like a sort of magical theatre run by monsters. Stone was so enraged by the changes that he unsuccessfully tried to sue the WGA and it seems to have effectively killed his Hollywood career.
What did you think? Share your thoughts below!
Up Next: Our next movie will be Werner Herzog’s documentary Encounters at the End of the World! We will meet to discuss it on Friday December 12th at 12PM EST! It turns out it’s not really streaming or available digitally unless you’re in the UK, but it is on YouTube so feel free to check out the entire thing below:
USA
- Stream: Nada!
- Rent or Buy: Nada!
Canada
- Stream: Nada!
- Rent or Buy: Nada!
UK
- Stream: Nada!
- Rent or Buy: Apple TV, Google Play, YouTube